Indecent

The Indecent Screen explores clashes over indecency in broadcast television among U.S.-based media advocates, the Federal Communications Commission, the TV industry, and audiences. Cynthia Chris focuses on decency debates since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which have called into question the roles of family and government, and the value of free speech.

theSkimm Reading Pick! Blurring the lines of blame and moral ambiguity, Indecent by Corinne Sullivan is a smart, sexy debut. Shy, introverted Imogene Abney has always been fascinated by the elite world of prep schools, having secretly longed to attend one since she was a girl in Buffalo, New York. So, shortly after her college graduation, when she’s offered a teaching position at the Vandenberg School for Boys, an all-boys prep school in Westchester, New York, she immediately accepts, despite having little teaching experience—and very little experience with boys. When Imogene meets handsome, popular Adam Kipling a few weeks into her tenure there, a student who exudes charm and status and ease, she’s immediately drawn to him. Who is this boy who flirts with her without fear of being caught? Who is this boy who seems immune to consequences and worry; a boy for whom the world will always provide? As an obsessive, illicit affair begins between them, Imogene is so lost in the haze of first love that she’s unable to recognize the danger she’s in. The danger of losing her job. The danger of losing herself in the wrong person. The danger of being caught doing something possibly illegal and so indecent. Exploring issues of class, sex, and gender, this smart, sexy debut by Corrine Sullivan shatters the black-and-white nature of victimhood, taking a close look at blame and moral ambiguity.

This book explores broadcast and Internet indecency from social and legal perspectives, using current cases and examples. Case law is used as a starting point from which to explore the social and legal boundaries of speech. Lipschultz argues that broadcast and Internet indecency reflect the outer boundaries of acceptable speech, and "understanding the limits of free speech in a free society allows us to theorize about the nature of communication." With indecency in the news every week, this volume is likely to get much critical and popular attention in the media discipline.

Edgar Award finalist, Best Fact Crime American Masters (PBS), “1 of 5 Essential Culture Reads” One of CrimeReads’ “Best True Crime Books of the Year” “A fast–paced, meticulously researched, thoroughly engaging (and often infuriating) look–see into the systematic criminalization of gay men and widespread condemnation of homosexuality post–World War I.” —Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle Stories of murder have never been just about killers and victims. Instead, crime stories take the shape of their times and reflect cultural notions and prejudices. In this Edgar Award–finalist for Best Fact Crime, James Polchin recovers and recounts queer stories from the crime pages―often lurid and euphemistic―that reveal the hidden history of violence against gay men. But what was left unsaid in these crime pages provides insight into the figure of the queer man as both criminal and victim, offering readers tales of vice and violence that aligned gender and sexual deviance with tragic, gruesome endings. Victims were often reported as having made “indecent advances,” forcing the accused's hands in self–defense and reducing murder charges to manslaughter. As noted by Caleb Cain in The New Yorker review of Indecent Advances, “it’s impossible to understand gay life in twentieth–century America without reckoning with the dark stories. Gay men were unable to shake free of them until they figured out how to tell the stories themselves, in a new way.” Indecent Advances is the first book to fully investigate these stories of how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.

Examines the government's increasing attempts to control the airwaves to maintain a standard of decency.

Broadcast Indecency (1997) treats broadcast indecency as more than a simple regulatory problem in American law. The author’s approach cuts across legal, social and economic concerns, taking the view that media law and regulation cannot be seen within a vacuum that ignores cultural realities. It treats broadcast as a phenomenon challenging the policy approach of government regulation, and is an exploration of the political and social processes involved in the government control of mass media content.

Indecent Theology brings liberation theology up to date by introducing the radical critical approaches of gender, postcolonial, and queer theory. Grounded in actual examples from Latin America, Marcella Althaus-Reid's highly provocative, but immaculately researched book reworks three distinct areas of theology - sexual, political and systematic. It exposes the connections between theology, sexuality and politics, whilst initiating a dramatic sexual rereading of systematic theology. Groundbreaking, intriguing and scholarly, Indecent Theology broadens the debate on sexuality and theology as never before.